The Letter
by VillainousVexation
Summary: A year after the Fifth, Evey writes a letter


Disclaimer: If V were mine, halfway through the movie someone in the audience would have said, 'Hey, why is that short girl tackling V and dragging him offscreen?' None of it is. Alan Moore, Wachowski Brothers, David Lloyd, Vertigo, and men in scary business suits own V and Evey. I just think naughty thoughts and giggle to myself evilly. I am making no money off of this. I do this instead of my homework. Please do not sue me. I have no money, and my organs have been tainted by smoking and alcohol, making them unsaleable on the black market.

"A Letter always seemed to me like Immortality, for is it not the Mind alone, without corporeal friend?"

- Emily Dickinson

V:

I thought you didn't love me. It was never even an issue. When I gave you my heart, it didn't matter if you wanted it or not; you already had it. That was not the reason I gave it to you. And I thought you could never return those feelings, the feelings that even now keep me up at night. But I loved you with everything I have, everything I am. And that must be worth something.

I thought you didn't love me. Not the way I wanted you to. You were teacher, mentor, prison master, father. But lover? You seemed so beyond such base emotions. Now I understand how wrong I was. Too late. And you - the bravest man I ever met - you only had the courage to confess how you felt while dying in my arms. You died in my arms. Sometimes I still feel the weight of your body, and remember the moment I knew you were finally gone. Then I wait for my hands to stop shaking.

It's been a year since you died. One long year I've lived without you.I'm not the same girl you knew. I'm more than I was that night we met. A little less, since you died. I spent one year with the man I loved. Less, when you think of the time I spent away from you, before and after my... incarceration. Less than a year, and look what happened.

I could be bitter, having spent only one year with the love of my life, never getting to be with you the way I wanted, but I'm not. I could be angry, over what you did to me, over the time I had to stay away. I could hate you for the way it all ended. But I don't. I can't. Part of loving you was understanding what you couldn't give me. And I have no more space in my heart to be bitter. Besides, you already knew everything I could have said. I never had your way with words.

A new world was born the night you died. I'm of the old world, if only because of you. I have seen too much pain and blood to be untouched. Like you, I am a body of scars; mine are just below the surface. I am not part of this new world I am helping to rebuild. This would have saddened you, but it remains a fact. Too much of me was connected to you. I have a purpose and a meaning; I have a reason. I understand that. But I still believe that some vital part of me disappeared down that dark tunnel, lying beside you in the train.

It's been a year, and I still miss you. It's been a year. It could have been a century, and the pain is still as sharp as the moment I knew you had died.

I remember beyond the fifth of November, V. I remember everything. I read everything I can, to block out the pain and the memories I can't forget. I remember everything. This world, this new England, I like to imagine it as the child we never had. The child of slaves and prisoners and murderers, of terrorists and torture victims and madmen, rising up to bring hope.

And I admit that I wait for the end. I immerse myself in life every day, but at night in the few minutes before sleep, I think of you, and the peace that will come when I too am finished. I wait for the day that my work is done, and I can finally rest. I'm tired, V. And I miss you.

I'm writing to a dead man who will never read these words. But I've written them, and I've said everything I need to. Now I'm done. I can't bury you; your ghost follows me, lies beside me in bed. But I can accept it now. Accept the fact that I will never see you again, never hear your voice, never tell you all these things you already knew. But I will not bury you. Your ghost will walk beside me until I become one myself, if only because I can't let you go.

The only person I want to read these words is dead. So I will burn this for you. Return it to the fire that made you all that you were, the fire that destroyed what you could have been. And I'll use the ashes to grow your roses. I love you.

Evey


End file.
